sponsored: my favorite tools

Time to share another me-made! It’s another simple tee, actually shares the same guts as my favorite handmade blue bird shirt: 2-piece pattern, just a front and a back, no pesky sleeves. For this one I added a colorful flowered placket detail for contrast, and I thought I’d walk you through how I did it.

I started by cutting out the tee and constructing the placket separately. A typical placket has extra fabric sewn behind it to finish the raw edges of the slit, but I cheated. I constructed my placket with two pieces of fabric rather than one, and the seam down the center (and its generous seam allowance) allowed me to finish those edges without adding more fabric.

I sewed my two rectangles together until about halfway up, then used the rest of that unsewn area to make the slit, hemming it into the Vee shape you see above.

Flipped, pressed, ready to go!

I then placed the placket on the shirt front, lining up the bottom edge where I wanted it to end up. I flipped the placket to sew it right-to-right along the placket’s bottom seam: that way, when I flip the placket to the right side, everything is in the right place and one set of raw edges is taken care of.

After stitching that seam, I pressed the raw edges of the right and left sides of the placket under, then turned everything to the right side. This photo was taken right before topstitching the sides in place.

After top stitching, the placket was securely attached and I finished up by trimming away the black shirt fabric behind it. I did a few hand stitches to make the corners extra secure, and then continued with the shirt as normal. I finished the neckline of the shirt with a strip of black binding, and that finished the last raw edge of the placket.

The final special touch on this shirt is the sleeves: I bound the end of each sleeve with a strip of fabric to match the placket and tie it all together. That might be my favorite part!

My mom took these modeled shots on our family trip to Barcelona: here I am at Parc Guell, one of my favorite places in the whole world. The mosaic benches are just amazing… every time I look at my pictures I become ever more determined to tile my kitchen backsplash using broken plates. How awesome would that be?!

Samantha wrote on Monday, February 19, 2018 at 2:51 pm | Categories: Clothes

Welcome to my new sewing room! It’s my favorite room in the house: this is where the magic happens. Out of all the rooms, this one has taken the most tweaking to get it just how I like it. It’s a never-ending process, but I love where it’s at right now so it’s time for a tour!

First of all, this room is huge and bright. There are two windows, and I added four recessed, dimmable LEDs in the ceiling so I’m never lacking for light. I painted the walls gray, like I’ve always dreamed, and I’ll never fall out of love with that original hardwood.

I found this ironing board the week after I moved in: it was propped against my neighbor’s trashcan, waiting for its trip to the landfill. I couldn’t resist the color, so it came home with me, I removed the legs, and now it’s my magnet + peg board.

The Juki came with its own table, so I shortened this desk by chopping a few inches off the legs to make it an ideal sewing height. The desk was a steal at a recent estate sale: I found it in the corner of a shed, and the top was all dusty, so they let me have it for $20. Its two drawers are perfect for holding the Juki manual, presser feet, and extra bobbins, and the best part is that the drawers are just small enough that I’m not tempted to clutter them up with less related things.

I try to keep this little table near the entryway clear for sewing lessons – if someone brings her own machine, that’s where we set it up. The rolling cart underneath holds my plywood sheets for laser cutting, and it’s easy to roll out of the way when I need that space.

The cutting table lives in the center of the room, and I finally live in a space big enough for the table to hold both leaves. It’s sheer luxury to have a table this big and flat and ready for whatever I throw at it. I have two rolling drawer units underneath: one holds all of my “neutral” fabrics: white/black/gray cottons, knits, or linings ready to accent whatever I’m making. The other holds larger cuts and my trusty paper cutter lives on top, ready to roll into action.

The white shoe divider is dedicated to fabrics with an intended purpose: the “on-deck” shelf. The bookcase holds my trims, buttons, and, currently… the fabrics I haven’t managed to put away elsewhere. I just got most of those blue-handled bins for Christmas and it was so satisfying to finally sort all the zippers, bias tapes, and cording into their own bins.

This vintage drawer thing holds my buttons, sorted by color, and other handy supplies like q-tips, popsicle sticks, small glues, baker’s twine. Another estate sale find from a while back, it wasn’t super dirty when I got it, but I ran the drawers through the dishwasher and they came out sparkling.

I mounted an over-the-door ironing board to the wall to save space. That was another big deal for me – not only do I get two leaves in my cutting table, but I get a full-sized ironing board! That’s the closet door, and to the far left is the door back out to the rest of the house.

Here’s my closet: another splurge in clear, clip-top bins. It feels amazing. My fabric has never been so organized, and the half-height bins mean a lot less digging is required. All the fluff – foam and polyfil – lives on the top shelf.

And that’s my sewing room! It’s certainly not always this clean, but so far I’ve been making a good effort to keep it organized. It’s a wonderful place to sew, craft, and teach. Thanks for coming on the tour with me!

Samantha wrote on Monday, February 12, 2018 at 7:00 am | Categories: Fabric, House

This post is quite the throwback for me. Hello old apartment! Hello old sewing machine! It’s good to see you again.

A common question I get from visitors to my sewing room is: what is the meaning of INDEPENDENCY?

The story begins, as you might expect, with little Sam finding her independence. I had lived with my parents for a year after starting my full-time job, and I had saved up a good chunk of money: it was time to find my own place. I did some Craigslist research and began apartment hunting.

One of the places I visited was a condo belonging to a woman in her mid-thirties. I quickly realized it wasn’t right for me: it was on the ground floor with a giant sliding glass door in the back, so I knew I wouldn’t feel safe enough by myself. But she and her father walked me through, and I made mental notes to fine-tune what I was looking for in a place of my own.

While the place wasn’t quite right, they were an incredibly kind family and her father was absolutely charming. He was an older man of Middle Eastern descent and spoke with an accent. He was so proud of me, this little bird finally leaving the nest. They both told me, “call us if you ever need anything! Even if you don’t take this apartment! We live right nearby, call us any time.”

And, as we made our separate ways, the old man wished me good luck, and said, “You’ll have a new flag on your head!”

I cocked my head, puzzled.

“You’ll have a new flag on your head!” he repeated, and mimed a flag pole rising from the crown of his head.

“A flag of Independency!”

I drove home grinning. I didn’t know what it meant to have a new flag on my head, but I knew he was right. Moving out, finding my first solo apartment: this was a big step in my life. And it felt so good to have someone agree, saying “yes, it’s true, this is a big deal!”

So I made a goal: once I found my apartment, I would sew myself a flag to celebrate. My new flag: a flag of Independency.

I found my beloved apartment, I set up my sewing room (sewing room tour 2014, sewing room tour 2015), and I made my celebration flag. I used wool, vintage pennant-style. I made a template for the letters in Illustrator to get the right angles and sizing. I used Heat-n-Bond to fuse the letters – one of these photos shows how I ruined my (old, decrepit) ironing board cover in the process! I then sewed around each letter, and used the same gold wool to bind the edges of the triangle.

In my new House, the flag still has a place of honor in the sewing room, reminding me of that special time and honoring all the other new flags I continue to acquire.

Happy New Year! Can’t wait to see what flags 2018 has in store.

Samantha wrote on Monday, January 8, 2018 at 1:53 pm | Categories: Home, House

I made this little tee last summer, and it’s one of the simplest shirts I’ve ever made. No sleeves to set, just two pattern pieces to stitch together and then hem. Despite this shirt’s simplicity – or possibly because of it – it is my #1 most worn me-made garment, hands down.

The ultimate test of wearability for me-mades is simple: does it make it into my suitcase? This shirt passed with flying colors, and has traveled as far as Thailand! But these pictures are from another one of its journeys, when I met my favorite Marie in New York for a weekend of fabric shopping, dessert eating, and general exploring.

What’s extra special is that I bought the fabric on another Marie adventure, at the Türkenmarkt in Berlin. The fabric was cheap, and it’s not great quality, but somehow it became an extremely comfortable shirt with the perfect amount of drape and stretch. After a year of nonstop wear, it’s starting to thin out, especially where the shirt ends up rubbing on my belt buckle, but I think I have enough fabric left for a clone.

Trips with Marie always include blog photos for us both, like these where we crossed the Brooklyn bridge and I said things like, “am I walking too fast? is it blurry? how’s this?” and she patiently snapped shot after shot.

Of course, I can’t neglect to mention the fabric. Mood was the queen of eye candy, as always (and winner of both our wallets…), but there were plenty of stores, like the one above, that provided loads of inspiration. Finding fabric is a joy in itself, but the best part of this trip was discussing future projects with a fellow crafter. One of us would spot a fabric similar to one already in the stash, and we’d talk through a planned shirt, skirt, or bag… so many ideas, so little time!

For Marie’s much more timely documentation of our New York trip, check out her blog posts: Day 1, Day 2.

Samantha wrote on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 7:00 am | Categories: Clothes